Parent Initiatives: The Healthy Eating and Getting Fit Workshops

Since our beginning, Operation Shoestring has worked to meet the needs of the community in many ways. While one of our primary focuses is on children and afterschool programs, we also have many parent initiatives to make sure parents’ needs are being met as well. 

About six years ago, Operation Shoestring began working with the Child Fund to complete a situation assessment for parents. This assessment helped us look deeper into the Jackson community and identify some of the issues centered around parents. Based on that assessment, we realize parents wanted to have more intimate meetings to vocalize their own needs and opinions, as well as programs that focused on their own challenges that they faced. 

Responding to the needs of Operation Shoestring’s parents

In the past, we’ve done financial assistance workshops, and this year, we decided to start the Healthy Eating and Getting Fit workshop. This workshop occurs once a month for Operation Shoestring parents and focuses on a different topic about health and wellness each session. 

Coordinated and overseen by Star Pool, 20 parents participated in the first session via Zoom. A lot of the parents had questions about what they need to do to live a healthier lifestyle, and some of the issues that came up were how to combat chronic diseases — high blood pressure, diabetes — and how to create a culture of health in the house. 

When it comes to living a healthier lifestyle and becoming fit, that can be a challenge for many people; one must consider factors like culture, demographics, environment, access, and affordability. 

During the workshop, Operation Shoestring invited Elena Dent, a dietician from UMMC, to discuss what healthy eating looks like. A topic is picked for each workshop — how to read and understand nutrition labels, for example — and parents get to ask questions and give feedback. Leaders walk them through an activity or cooking exercise, giving parents a chance to learn how to make a healthier option with things they have at home. 

Giving parents the tools they need to succeed

Operation Shoestring wants to ensure that we are identifying the needs of the whole family,  and not just the children in our afterschool and summer programs. We do this through assessments as well as testing groups, where we get a group of parents together to talk through some of our plans and get specific feedback. 

A parents’ role in a child’s life is one of the influential aspects of a child’s development, and that’s why we have parent initiatives. Anything a parent goes through has a direct impact on the children. Making sure parents have what they need to stay safe, empowered, and secure helps support the child, so that they can move forward and flourish.

As we proceed throughout the year, we plan on building up our workshops to expand to more topics, getting deeper into topics like financial literacy and home support, like building your credit and becoming a homeowner, as well as educational support for parents. 

Operation Shoestring is working to build an ecosystem of high quality learners by providing workshops for our community and afterschool programs such as financial education, cooking, physical fitness, science, math enrichment, and academic intervention.  We are investing in the hearts and minds of our parents and their children to promote health and self-sufficiency, and faithfully extending the hand of hope and opportunity to empower the needy, uplift our target neighborhoods and the larger community, and brighten the future for us all. 

By teaching children and helping parents, we all rise together.